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Benicia High School Holiday Food Drive 2011

Benicia High School Holiday Food Drive 2011

Guest post by Vincent Lee: I’m Vincent Lee, a senior at Benicia High School, and got approval to organize and coordinate the Holiday Food Drive at our school. I was thrilled to be able to make a difference in my community and help collect over 2,000 pounds for the Food Bank.

Food drives should run for at least 2 weeks, with enough time to advertise at the beginning of the drive as well as time at the end to collect the cans and make prepare for the scheduled pick up. Be sure to have a committee to help you find empty boxes and have them delivered to each classroom and you’ll need their help to pick up the canned food items throughout the food drive. Don’t wait till the last minute to collect all the cans. I created a spreadsheet for us to keep track of the cans we collected from each of the classrooms.

Here are some suggestions to advertise your food drive at school: display the barrels at a place where students will notice them, find funding (possibly the PTA or PTSA) for a pizza party for the class that collects the most cans and announce this incentive at the beginning of the food drive, have the food drive announced each day on the PA system, write a blurb in the school newsletter that goes out to parents and students, have a teacher or administrator e-mail all the teachers about the food drive and the incentive. If your school has the automatic telephone announcement service to parents – use it to announce the food drive. I think involving parents is important.

The Food Bank people are friendly, great to work with and try so hard to help our community. Hopefully, students out there like me will join in and make a difference in our community as well. I’m proud of our school and the spirit our teachers and students have in making this Holiday Food Drive a success! Congratulations to Coach Tuiolosega’s 4th period class who won the pizza party by collecting over 400 cans! Special thanks to Mrs. Aragon’s classes who brought in over 760 cans, Mr. Alverez’s class who brought in 225 cans, my Link Crew teacher Mr. Nelson, and my awesome Link Crew committee: Michaela, Colby, Sierra, Matt, and Kailee!!